Seeing Red

I'm not hopping mad or anything like that.  I'm making another set of postcards on the theme of "Have a go at using one colour" and one colour that I have got quite a bit of is blue - not red, but one of the swapees has a birthday next month and has requested a blue card so I used another colour instead so I've picked red in different shades and tones. 

I joined strips in a sew and flip method over some wadding as one big piece and some strips were raw edge pieced on top having been cut with a zigzag rotary cutter blade.  With the addition of some fancy machine stitches, some hand stitching and sequins to add a bit of glitz (though I had to be frugal - didn't have many sequins in that colour) Here's the piece after further decoration.

Then cut up into six using the fancy rotary blade.

They won't be going out until a little later this month.

On Saturday I went to the Quilter's Guild Region 3 Area Day in New Milton with my friend Penny.  There were talks from art quilter Janet Twinn and also from Gill Turley who contributed to some quilting books including Fast and Easy Quilts and some others in the series (the link is for an Amazon page).  Both really good speakers with very different subjects and of course you can't go to one of the meetings without purchasing something.  I bought a scrap bag of glitzy bits in silver and pink and I bought some packs of fabrics that were used for a tombola by A Gift of Quilts who have been raising money to organise quilts for teams participating in the Olympics.

 Rather yummy looking fabric, don't you think?

Today is my day of work and also a lull in the really rainy weather that we've had of late, the sun even came out this afternoon, so I took advantage of this and ventured out into our rather neglected and battered garden. In spite of this there are some lovely things growing like the Lily of the Valley which has spread

Some heucheras that are springing into life

And there are some buds on the iris (so long as the slugs keep of them!). Ignore the dandelion at the top of the photo - they seem to be doing too well in our garden!

I did some weeding and spent a bit of time cleaning out all these pots

They make a really nice photo, anyway I think there's a lot so a sort out is in order here.  But the main thing was it was great to be outside and get to grips with the garden.